Topeka police Capt. Mike Cross acknowledged he breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday morning after an armed standoff with a man who had what appeared to be a handgun concluded peacefully outside a shopping center on the city’s southwest side.

After about 90 minutes, the man surrendered to officers, who took him into custody without incident.

Cross — and likely all of the other approximate two dozen officers on the scene — knew things could have turned out much differently.

“This is the way we want every law enforcement encounter to go,” Cross said, moments after the standoff ended. “It’s absolutely a relief. He is agreeing to go get help.”

The man had drawn attention to himself around 8:20 a.m. Wednesday as he sat on a brick ledge outside a business in the Foxcross shopping center, a strip mall on the east side of the 2900 block of S.W. Wanamaker Road.

People who worked at businesses in the strip mall called Shawnee County dispatchers, saying the man was pointing what appeared to be a gun at his head, occasionally waving it in the air.

Cross said the weapon the man had turned out to be a “replica” and wasn’t a real firearm, though law enforcement officers didn’t know that until the standoff had ended.

Cross said people who reported the man’s behavior said they never felt threatened by him, and that the man appeared to be posing a danger only to himself.

Still, a man who was prominently displaying a gun while seated in a high-traffic, public place attracted immediate response from area law enforcement officers.

Within minutes, officers from the Topeka Police Department, Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office and Kansas Highway Patrol converged on the scene. By 8:45 a.m., they had the parking lot closed off.

Multiple officers had rifles trained on the man. Some of the officers with guns drawn stood along the west side of a BP gas station car wash just north of the Foxcross shopping center. Other officers with their rifles pointed at the man stood to the south end of the parking lot, immediately north of a Starbucks coffee shop.

In all, about a dozen officers had their weapons drawn and pointed directly at the man.

For at least 20 minutes, both north- and southbound traffic was allowed to pass along the 2900 block of S.W. Wanamaker Road, as many motorists no doubt were oblivious to what was going on in the shopping center.

Then, around 9 a.m., Kansas Highway Patrol troopers blocked motorists from traveling on that stretch of Wanamaker, diverting northbound traffic into the Hy-Vee supermarket parking lot, across the street to the west from where the incident was unfolding, and blocking southbound traffic at S.W. 29th.

As officers held their positions, the man could be seen seated partially behind the brick wall, his upper torso showing.

On occasion, Cross said, people will commit what is known as “suicide by cop,” where they will take actions that leave officers no options but to fire their weapons at them.

Members of the police department’s Crisis Intervention Team around 9:30 a.m. could be heard speaking to the man over a loudspeaker.

“Raise your hand if you can hear me,” an officer said over the loudspeaker.

The man raised a hand, and soon officers and the man began speaking by phone.

Within 10 minutes, Cross said, the man surrendered. He stood up from his spot on the brick ledge, raised his hands, then slowly walked about 50 feet into the middle of the otherwise empty parking lot, where he knelt with his hands still raised.

Police with rifles drawn moved in on him from both the south and north. They cautiously approached the man, who continued to keep his arms raised. Officers then took the man’s arms, placed his hands behind his back and took him into custody. The officers frisked the man — who wore a white T-shirt and gray pants — to make sure he didn’t have any other devices strapped to himself.

Cross said the man never pointed the weapon at
police officers during the entirety of the standoff.

Cross said the man was known to Topeka police officers and had a history of mental illness.

The man, whose name wasn’t immediately available, was taken into custody around 10 a.m. after he surrendered with his hands up, bringing a potentially volatile situation to an end.

It was later learned that the weapon the man was displaying was a “replica” handgun, Cross said.

The man was to be transported to a local mental health facility, where he would “get the help he needs,” Cross said.

No one was injured in the incident, which Cross called a “mental health crisis.”

Cross couldn’t say if the man would be cited for any crime.

He praised the work of the police department’s Crisis Intervention Team officers for helping talk the man into
surrendering.

At least one person had posted on social media that he was kept for about two hours in the Starbucks coffee shop until after the standoff had ended.

By 10:30 a.m., traffic was allowed to proceed again in the 2900 block of S.W. Wanamaker.

Contact Phil Anderson at (785) 295-1195 or follow live reports @Philreports on Twitter. Like him on Facebook at facebook.com/philreports.tcj/

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